UN "Programme of Action": Track & Destroy Small Arms/Ammo

At its biennial meeting, the UN's Programme of Action calls for the tracking and destruction of small arms and ammunition, as well as civilian disarmament.

This week in Manhattan, delegates from around the world have congregated at the United Nations headquarters to discuss ways to finally implement the Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (POA), the second arm of the UN’s pincer strategy aimed at disarming civilians in the United States and all the UN member nations.

According to the text of the latest draft of the agreement, the POA will serve as an “international instrument to enable states to identify and trace, in a timely and reliable manner” the small arms and light weapons that are the target of the scheme.

In practice, this means that the governments of member nations (including the United States) should create a massive, all-inclusive database of all parties that manufacture, own, sell, trade, or transfer arms and ammunition.

If recent history is a reliable indicator of how such data would be used, after the catalog is complete, Congress would pass a law (or the president would issue an executive order) compelling “voluntary” surrender of privately-owned weapons, ammo, parts, and components (including reloading equipment). If, after a statutorily-set window, citizens don’t turn in these items to their local law enforcement, then officers will be sent to remind violators of their responsibility under the law to disarm.

The delegates — including those from the United States — present at the fifth biennial meeting of POA members have agreed to begin developing domestic legal frameworks that will provide for the “proper management of small arms and light weapons stockpiles.”

To assist member states in the implementation of the disarmament and stockpiling of the small weapons and light arms in the hands of anyone other than approved government entities, the POA places the enforcement of the provisions “into the operational activities of United Nations peacekeeping missions.”

In other words, should the Congress and the president fail to begin seizing and stockpiling privately owned weapons “in a timely manner,” then the UN will deploy blue-helmeted peacekeeping troops to assist in the operation.

Nations are reminded in the POA draft (draft 4) that the stockpile management plan should be part of a “wider national disarmament” program.

In recognition, seemingly, that guns without bullets are nothing more than clubs, paragraph 7 of the POA draft agreement indicates that participating delegates (again, including those from the United States) realize that “a comprehensive approach to small arms and light weapons stockpile management should include ammunition.”

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